Retro Mid-Century Atomic Space Age Christmas Decor Theme

Ahhh I am so excited to show you our home office’s Christmas theme!! I’ve had this retro sci-fi idea floating around in my mind forever and I’m so glad I was able to pull it all together. I was in a pretty serious car accident in November, so for a moment I didn’t think I’d be able to rally in time to make this happen, but I was able to work it out and I’m super happy with the result.

I was inspired by the atomic and space age depictions of Christmas popular in the mid 20th century. Think Christmas cards with Santa riding a rocket, flying saucer shaped Shiny Brites, and even movies like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Unfortunately, it was a difficult task finding the appropriate items to deck my halls in this theme, aside from one or two retro style ornaments I found at Michael’s. Fortunately I was able to craft my way through enough projects to make it pretty much exactly what I had in mind.

I’ll be following this post up with others detailing the DIY crafts I did with links to materials, so stay tuned for that. For now let me take you on a little tour of the room!

Since it’s a small room I needed a tree that wouldn’t overwhelm the space. I went with this slim white tree from Treetopia which fits nicely. It has white lights, but my vintage Norelco color wheel adds some festive color to it as well.

To decorate the tree I used blue and gold star wired garland and a variety of starburst ornaments I’ve collected over the years.

Of course I used some of my vintage reflector ornaments and threaded ball fringe comets.I found a few fitting ornaments at Michaels like a flying saucer, rocket Santa, and an aluminum tray TV dinner (space age technology!).I also made colorful sputnik ornaments (look for those in an upcoming post!)

And I even added a space helmet (an empty craft ornament) to Frosty!

I found an astronaut nutcracker and gave him an aluminum tree to decorate. This is just three craft cones of different sizes covered in foil tape and stacked!Another rocket Santa! Made out of a bird feeder, metallic tape, and mini ornaments.

And my new pet, my favorite Christmas creation of all time, my space deer! He’s made out of a papier mache deer and a round terrarium.

Over on the shelves we’ve got some spacey aluminum and vintage Shiny Brites.

I found this vintage space Santa image and had it enlarged and printed. It even has space reindeer!

Looks pretty good over by our 1960 Philco Predicta.

And there it is! I hope you liked the tour!

Stay tuned for a followup post of details on the DIYs and all the resources.

Love this! I noticed a bit of the Space Age theme creeping in here and there on IG, but you went over the top and killed it!! Congratulations. All your hard work paid off. I think I could even do a similar tree skirt for a simpler vintage silver aluminum tree next year. Time to start looking for treasures!